Beware the superficially profound. :)

[arcadiagt5]

Disclaimer: I am not a mathematician so what follows is more in the line of philosophy. And I may have completely missed the point.

It occurred to me recently that computer systems, and in particular the software components, are in essence mathematical systems* and that Godel's Incompleteness Theorems may well apply.

ie: Every computer system has to have a fundamental assumption that is unprovable, and may well be unchangeable without a total re-write..

From a Business Analysis perspective this is yet another reminder to make your assumptions explicit otherwise a hidden axiom of the system may well bite you down the track.

Oh, and in the unlikely event of anyone being interested I've added a business analysis tag to classify my ramblings on related topics. :)

Comments

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

The computer science analogy of Godels theorem is the Halting Problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem), and proving its insolvability one of Alan Turings many achievements. The two are quite closely related (roughly, you can use one to prove the other).

See, I learnt more than just coding in my computer science degree.

[arcadiagt5.livejournal.com]

Cool.

And, yeah, looks like I completely missed the point. :)

What I was trying to get at was the idea that a requirement set will have at least one basic axiom that is fundamental to everything else.

Obviously it would be nice to know what those axioms are for any system that you're working on and better still if you can explicitly choose them.

[rdmasters.livejournal.com]

A second example is the AV/Malware war. Indeed, the good Mr Hoffstader intimated as much in GEB:EGB in the dialog involving the Crab's record player.

The halting problem, is, however a much purer example.